Vegetarian In Boston
Maynard S. Clark's Veggie and Boston Blog talks about vegetarian topics AND Boston-related topics, often intersecting them interestingly.
Maynard S. Clark is a long-time and well-known vegan in Greater Boston, who often quips in his 'elevator pitch':
"I've been vegan now for over half my natural life, longer than most human earthlings have been alive."

Monday, September 07, 2009

Examiner.com - Tomorrow is the day! The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) launches their 21-Day Vegan Kickstart program on September 8. Sign up for free and you’ll receive daily tips and recipes to keep you informed, plus access to a discussion board to keep you motivated. Their website is packed with menu ideas and recipes.
The goal of the program is to help Americans adopt a more healthful diet and lifestyle for weight control and prevention of chronic disease. But it’s a great opportunity for anyone who wants to eliminate their use of animal products for a more ethical and compassionate lifestyle.
One caveat about the program; the recipes and menus are very low in fat. You can tweak them to suit your needs and tastes by choosing full-fat soymilk instead of nonfat and by using regular vegan salad dressings rather than nonfat ones. Sprinkle nuts and seeds onto salads or grain dishes, too; they can be an important part of a healthy vegan diet.
However you choose to use the kickstart program, if you have been thinking about going vegan, this is a great way to get the support that can make it happen!
Sign up here for the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart program (it's free) and check out resources for recipes and menus here.
For more information about vegan nutrition you might enjoy these articles:Ten Tips For Healthy Vegan DietsGetting Iron From Plant FoodsBuilding Healthy Bones On A Vegan DietWhere Do Vegans Get Their Protein?

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is challenging you to take their 21-day Vegan Kickstart, a program set up to help people adopt a healthy vegan lifestyle. Starting Tuesday September 8, you are challenged to maintain a vegan diet for 21 days. And they're guessing that you'll be feeling so good after just 21 days that you might just make a vegan diet a permanent fixture in your life!

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is challenging you to take their 21-day Vegan Kickstart, a program set up to help people adopt a healthy vegan lifestyle. Starting Tuesday September 8, you are challenged to maintain a vegan diet for 21 days. And they're guessing that you'll be feeling so good after just 21 days that you might just make a vegan diet a permanent fixture in your life!

We've all heard that there is an obesity epidemic. According to the CDC, in 2008 only one state had obesity rates below 20%. Given the trend of the statistics for the rate of obesity, we can only assume that the obesity rate is still growing in 2009. Obesity is the leading cause of heart disease and type-2 diabetes, as well as some types of cancer, respiratory problems, and an array of other illnesses. According to the book Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis, RD and Vesanto Melina, RD, vegans on average have much lower rates of obesity than do non-vegetarians, weighing nearly 10% less than their meat eating counterparts.

Overeating, and in particular overeating of unhealthy, nutrient deficient foods leads to many cases of obesity. Most of these foods are high in fat, high in calories, and high in cholesterol. Many of these unhealthy foods, like meat, cheese and other dairy products are physically addicting. According to Dr. Neal Barnard, MD, author of Breaking the Food Seduction and President of PCRM, meat, cheese and other dairy products contain casomorphins, which attach to the brain's opiate receptors and cause an effect that is similar to opiate drugs such as morphine and heroin. Dr. Barnard says that it can take just 3 weeks for these addictions to food to be broken, but that it's best to leave behind meat, cheese and dairy cold turkey, or more appropriately, cold tofu. By eating these in moderation you are just setting yourself up for failure and relapse. Just as you would with any drug you are addicted to, success requires stopping all together.

The PCRM is hoping that you will successfully break these food addictions and seductions on their 21-day Vegan Kickstart and be on the way to a happier, healthier you. To sign up to participate in the Vegan Kickstart and to receive daily tips, recipes and motivation via e-mail, visit the PCRM's petition site.

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About Me

In past three years, I completed REACH Intermediate (Harvard), Research Administration (Emmanuel College RAC/GCRA), NIH rDNA, and RTP (HSPH) Certificates. Completing Capstone research and thesis after two years of graduate courses for Master of Science in Management (MSM in Research Administration) in Boston's Emmanuel College. Have been working at Harvard for a VERY long time - there's SO much here!

I've been vegan over half my life. That's longer than most human earthlings (and most NONHUMAN earthlings) have been alive. All that time, I've been making connections for plant-based diets - and doing that through the Vegetarian Resource Center since 1993 (and before that through various strategies and structures.

My observation is that the vegan *movement* is constituted by fellow humans who have awakened to moral sensitivity in our individual observations of the populated world around us, a world that filled plentifully with persons - not only human, but also nonhuman, and that all persons are such that moral consideration is due to all of them. We cannot give that consideration individually; therefore, we must become persons of principle, who resolve our ethical duties towards other persons at a level of principle and self-regulation. I believe in 'ahimsa' or 'dynamic injury' as the proper regulatory principle for human behavior.

I also believe that many practicing vegans have attached nonessentials to being vegan, which often are their political aspirations and their willingness to 'entitle' certain kinds of activity 'over against' things that they wish to reduce with the same energy with which they are holding out their idea of what veganism is. I think that the idea of veganism is independent of that, tht it is defined BY (a) purely plant-based diets without the inclusion of honey or anything from animal or insect and (b) a principle of non-injury that is grounded in one's sense of the moral considerableness of personhood, regardless of how those persons act. One's ability to recognize those claims in any particular case are abetted or abated by the context in which those others are experienced and how they impact us. At the least, we have, I think as a vegan for ethical reasons, a duty to not cause needless harm to others, and those needless harms in mid-2014 would be harms for our clothing, food, shelter, medicinal ingredients, entertainment, etc.

Where there are challenges to living by those principles, we need, I believe as an ethical vegan, to agitate and organize for effective means to realize optimal ways to realize those values in the material world where we find ourselves.